This one isn't about having a Neanderthal baby, but bringing a Neanderthal boy to the present: [link]The Ugly Little Boy,http://www.amazon.com/Ugly-Little-Boy-Isaac-Asimov/dp/0553561227/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358882012&sr=1-1&keywords=the+ugly+little+boy[/link], by Isaac Asimov.

"The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don't mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed." - Sarah Vowell

Who's to say that Neanderthals were not decent folk that got absorbed by the newcomers? Who knows what advantages they contributed in terms of genetic diversity? It's easy to bad mouth people who are not around to defend their reputation.

Who's to say that Neanderthals were not decent folk that got absorbed by the newcomers? Who knows what advantages they contributed in terms of genetic diversity? It's easy to bad mouth people who are not around to defend their reputation.

It seems entirely possible that as they were not as violent as we are, we wiped them out.

"Pioneering Harvard geneticist George Church suggests that the day is coming when we'll want to reverse-engineer the Neanderthal genome and pass the now-extinct creatures' advantages to our own progeny. All that's needed would be an "extremely adventurous female human" to serve as a surrogate mother.

The difference between the Neanderthals and the Newbies here is that the Neanderthals will remember this tune:

I'd love to believe that if humanity brought a brand new super-minority into the world- Neaderthal, Australopithicus or homo erectus- humanity would accept it with infinite compassion. One can't help but have a doubt or two.

I almost posted this morning, but I will now: Like Loh, I suspect us Homo Sapiens wiped out the Neanderthals in a genocidal way. I think we weren't very nice to the Neanderthals.Just a guess, of course.

"The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don't mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed." - Sarah Vowell

On a recent NOVA episode it was revealed that Africans are least likely to carry Neanderthal DNA and that a heavier level of the DNA resides in those who migrated away from Africa.

The Neandertals were resident in Europe and parts of Asia, so this makes sense. It's not that they carried Neandertal genes from Africa but that they interbred with Neandertals where they were going.

Right-o.I have also heard that in the story of David and Goliath it is speculated that Goliath my have been a Neanderthal. There are some problems with that since the story takes place when no Neanderthal presence is known. Given the folklore in the Bible, though, that may be a long told story that simply got attached to David.

Who's to say that Neanderthals were not decent folk that got absorbed by the newcomers? Who knows what advantages they contributed in terms of genetic diversity? It's easy to bad mouth people who are not around to defend their reputation.

[link]the professor,http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/no-harvard-geneticist-not-trying-clone-neanderthal-baby-213859546.html[/link] "told the Herald Monday night that the Daily Mail article was based on an interview he gave to the German-language magazine Der Spiegel and poorly translated comments he made about the possibility of one day cloning a Neanderthal.

“I’m certainly not advocating it,” Church told the Herald. “I’m saying, if it is technically possible someday, we need to start talking about it today.”

Church added that he wasn’t even involved in the particular aspects of the Human Genome Project focused on Neanderthals. Nonetheless, he hopes to use the mistake made by the media for the greater good. “I want to use it as an educational moment to talk about journalism and technology," he said.

Not helping with the confusion, the Daily Mail has still not updated or corrected its story, which as of press time has more than 24,000 Facebook shares and 1,200 reader comments.

It's not a new idea, at least for those of us who read science fiction. I don't recall the specific book or author, but there was a novel about cloning Neandertals I read a few years back.

Try [link]Robert J. Sawyer,http://www.sfwriter.com/exho.htm[/link].

Isn't there evidence that many or most of us carry some Neandertal genes?

I read his books as well, but no, that's not the author. I'll have to stop by the library and look it up again. The answer is yes, if your ancestors came from outside of Africa, the odds are good that you carry 2 to 5% of Neandertal in your genome. Another interesting thing is that there was another group, called the Denisovans, who apparently were folded into the mix, particularly for Australians and Melanesians.

When Veronica Tremain's brother is brutally murdered, both she and the FBI try to make sense of a bizarre conspiracy that seems to be targeting genetic professors. While searching for secret papers her brother told her about in his last frantic telephone call before his death, Veronica meets three other people on the run from his killers; Bryce Johnson who has been working with her brother; Rebecca Armely, a former research assistant in the genetics program; and little Abel, Rebecca's son, an unusual but very lovable child whom Rebecca would do anything - including die - to protect.

On a recent NOVA episode it was revealed that Africans are least likely to carry Neanderthal DNA and that a heavier level of the DNA resides in those who migrated away from Africa.

The Neandertals were resident in Europe and parts of Asia, so this makes sense. It's not that they carried Neandertal genes from Africa but that they interbred with Neandertals where they were going.

Right-o.I have also heard that in the story of David and Goliath it is speculated that Goliath my have been a Neanderthal. There are some problems with that since the story takes place when no Neanderthal presence is known. Given the folklore in the Bible, though, that may be a long told story that simply got attached to David.

There is evidence that Neanderthals had lived in the northen part of Israel. I read about this years ago and my first thought was that the concept of Nephilim (the offspring of the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men" according to Genesis 6:4; and giants who inhabited Canaan according to Numbers 13:33.) may have come about from folks finding some Neanderthal remains.You can read more about the discovery of Neanderthal remains in Israel here: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1190789/Kebara

I have also heard that in the story of David and Goliath it is speculated that Goliath my have been a Neanderthal. There are some problems with that since the story takes place when no Neanderthal presence is known. Given the folklore in the Bible, though, that may be a long told story that simply got attached to David.

There is evidence that Neanderthals had lived in the northen part of Israel. I read about this years ago and my first thought was that the concept of Nephilim (the offspring of the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men" according to Genesis 6:4; and giants who inhabited Canaan according to Numbers 13:33.) may have come about from folks finding some Neanderthal remains.You can read more about the discovery of Neanderthal remains in Israel here: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1190789/Kebara

The problem with the theory that giants mentioned in the Bible were Neanderthals is that Neanderthals were short, only about 5' 6", at a time when "modern" type humans were quite tall, about 5' 10".

The story of those "giants" was when humans lived in Mesopotamia, not in Israel. Incidentally, when and why did the Germans take away the h in "Neanderthal?" I know it's their valley and their language, but just springing a truncated spelling on us like that ...

The story of those "giants" was when humans lived in Mesopotamia, not in Israel. Incidentally, when and why did the Germans take away the h in "Neanderthal?" I know it's their valley and their language, but just springing a truncated spelling on us like that ...

It seems to be fairly recent that the 'Neandertal' spelling has become widely adopted. Even the [link]German Wikipedia article about the Neanderthal Museum,http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_Museum[/link] uses both spellings, and the museum was just founded in 1996. The first sentence is "Das Neanderthal-Museum ist ein Museum im Neandertal bei Düsseldorf." The [link]Neanderthal Museum home page,http://www.neanderthal.de/en/home/index.html[/link] has a charming image of a Neanderthal male in a business suit (one of the changing pictures at the top).I checked the Google Ngram viewer for the German corpus to see how the two spellings have been used over time. [link]Here's the graph.,http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Neanderthal%2CNeandertal&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=20&smoothing=3&share=[/link] "Neanderthal" is older, but there is a large spike for "Neandertal" about 1910. The English corpus also show both spellings in use (just change the language selection at the top and rerun the query).

Very interesting. We have a faculty member who has been doing a dig for several summers at the site of a fairly large Neandertal village. It is a popular dig for graduate students. He spells it with an "h."